New Trump de­por­ta­tion rules al­low far more ex­pul­sions

New en­force­ment poli­cies bring full weight down on il­le­gals

U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has di­rected his ad­min­is­tra­tion to more ag­gres­sively en­force the na­tion’s im­mi­gra­tion laws, un­leash­ing the full force of the fed­eral govern­ment to find, ar­rest and de­port those in the coun­try il­le­gally, re­gard­less of whether they have com­mit­ted se­ri­ous crimes.

prac­tice the fear­ful speech that Trump of­fered on the cam­paign trail, vastly ex­pand­ing the def­i­ni­tion of “crim­i­nal aliens” and warn­ing that such peo­ple in the coun­try il­le­gally “rou­tinely vic­tim­ize Amer­i­cans,” dis­re­gard the “rule of law and pose a threat” to peo­ple in com­mu­ni­ties across the United States.

But taken to­gether, the new poli­cies are a re­jec­tion of the some­times more re­strained ef­forts by for­mer Pres­i­dents Barack Obama and Ge­orge W. Bush and their pre­de­ces­sors, who sought to bal­ance pro­tect­ing the na­tion’s bor­ders with fis­cal, lo­gis­ti­cal and humanitarian lim­its on the ex­er­cise of laws passed by Congress.

“The faith­ful ex­e­cu­tion of our im­mi­gra­tion laws is best achieved by us­ing all th­ese statu­tory au­thor­i­ties to the great­est ex­tent prac­ti­ca­ble,” John F. Kelly, the sec­re­tary of Home­land Se­cu­rity, wrote in one of two mem­o­ran­dums re­leased Tues­day. “Ac­cord­ingly, depart­ment per­son­nel shall make full use of th­ese au­thor­i­ties.”

The im­me­di­ate im­pact of that shift is not yet fully known. Ad­vo­cates for im­mi­grants warned Tues­day that the new bor­der con­trol and en­force­ment di­rec­tives would cre­ate an at­mos­phere of fear that was likely to drive those in the coun­try il­le­gally deeper into the shad­ows.

Ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials said some of the new poli­cies — like one seek­ing to send unau­tho­rized bor­der crossers from Cen­tral Amer­ica to Mex­ico while they await de­por­ta­tion hear­ings — could take months to im­ple­ment and might be lim­ited in scope.

For now, so-called Dream­ers, who were brought to the U.S. as young chil­dren, won’t be tar­geted un­less they com­mit crimes.

Trump has not yet said where he will get the bil­lions of dol­lars needed to pay for thou­sands of new bor­der con­trol agents, a net­work of de­ten­tion fa­cil­i­ties to de­tain peo­ple in the coun­try il­le­gally and a wall along the en­tire south­ern bor­der with Mex­ico.

But po­lit­i­cally, Kelly’s ac­tions Tues­day serve to re­in­force the pres­i­dent’s stand­ing among a core con­stituency — those who blame peo­ple in the coun­try il­le­gally for tak­ing jobs away from ci­ti­zens, com­mit­ting heinous crimes and be­ing a fi­nan­cial bur­den on fed­eral, state and lo­cal gov­ern­ments.

And be­cause of the changes, mil­lions of im­mi­grants in the coun­try il­le­gally now face a far greater like­li­hood of be­ing dis­cov­ered, pro­cessed and de­ported.

“Un­der this ex­ec­u­tive or­der, ICE will not ex­empt classes or cat­e­gories of re­moval aliens from po­ten­tial en­force­ment,” a fact sheet re­leased by the Depart­ment of Home­land Se­cu­rity said, us­ing the acro­nym for Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment. “All of those present in vi­o­la­tion of the im­mi­gra­tion laws may be sub­ject to im­mi­gra­tion ar­rest, de­ten­tion, and, if found re­mov­able by fi­nal or­der, re­moval from the United States.”

That in­cludes peo­ple con­victed of fraud in any of­fi­cial mat­ter be­fore a gov­ern­men­tal agency and peo­ple who “have abused any pro­gram re­lated to re­ceipt of pub­lic ben­e­fits.”

The pol­icy also calls for an ex­pan­sion of ex­pe­dited re­movals, al­low­ing Bor­der Pa­trol and Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms En­force­ment agents to im­me­di­ately de­port more peo­ple. Un­der the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion, ex­pe­dited re­moval was used only within 100 miles of the bor­der for peo­ple who had been in the coun­try no more than 14 days. Now it will in­clude all those who have been in the coun­try for up to two years, no mat­ter where. The change will re­quire an in­crease in re­sources.